Page 62 of The Route to You

He huffed a laugh and eased the Jeep back onto the road as a gust of wind kicked up snow across the highway. “High praise.”

“No, I mean it. You don’t get tense. Evan used to white-knuckle the steering wheel and snap at me like it was my fault the clouds existed.”

Kyle shot her a look. “Rude of you, really—summoning weather like that and forcing him to drive in it. Especially when you had a perfectly good broom you could have taken instead.”

His joke took a second for her to process, then a laugh bubbled up from someplace deep inside her she’d forgotten existed.

“You really don’t mind this, do you?”

“Mind what?”

“This.” She gestured widely to the weather, the Jeep, herself. “The snow. The whole . . . life not going according to plan thing.”

“Plans are frail things set up by people without an imagination.”

“Spoken like someone who doesn’t want to exist in reality.”

He sobered slightly, then cracked a half-hearted smile at her. “Granny used to say that, actually. But it’s all right. Her opinions and advice were sometimes questionable.”

“Oh, you don’t believe that for a second. You adored her.”

“I did.” He swallowed hard enough that his throat bobbed. “But she put on an act occasionally—the tough-as-nails persona. She never really recovered after my grandfather died, even though you wouldn’t know it. But she was all grit and get through it . Used to say that she was glad she outlived him because she knew she could survive without him, but he couldn’t have survived without her since he was so madly in love with her.”

Sloan set a hand over her heart, the ache there strong enough that it spread out into her chest. She wished she’d witnessed love like that in her life. Maybe she’d have been a better person because of it.

Maybe it was what made Kyle who he was.

Meanwhile, my mom was smitten with my dad, and yet he threw away everything she owned the second she died, never spoke of her again, and became a workaholic who only cared about his company.

And that was the thing, above all, she couldn’t quite forgive Dad for.

The GPS chimed again, cheerfully announcing another reroute.

Sloan groaned. “I swear, it’s just making things up now.”

“It’s doing its best.” He grimaced. “But we will have to stop at the next gas station and fill up. That’s the only thing about Wyoming roads that worries me—long stretches to the next station in the snow.”

She hadn’t thought of that. “Don’t scare me now.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve been topping us off every time, which is why I’ve stopped four times already.”

She smirked. “And here I thought you had an unusually small bladder for a man your size.”

“Who says I don’t? Speaking of which, hand me that soda we picked up at the last stop. Maybe the peanut M&Ms and Doritos, too. Oh, and the Twinkie.”

“You eat like a toddler.” She leaned down for the bag he’d stashed at her feet, then she uncapped the soda and handed it to him.

“I eat like a man who skipped lunch.” He gave her a pointed look.

They rounded a long, gentle curve, and something flickered in the headlights, darting off the road. A flash of black fur.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

She leaned forward. “Yeah. Was that . . . a bear?”

He frowned, shaking his head. “Too small.” He slowed further, scanning the shoulder. The snow thinned just enough for her to see a shape near the guardrail.

Not a bear, after all, but something far more familiar in shape, with floppy ears and black eyes that pierced right through her heart.